1955 Looking to Main Street at Auchinraith
An aerial photo of Blantyre in 1955 best shows High Blantyre Main Street at Auchinraith. I was contacted by a Blantyre Project ready who used to live in a former tenement on Main Street at the top of Auchinraith Road. The former tenement building is no longer there today.
I’ve marked up several interesting features including Murdoch’s shop next door to the tenement. Mrs Murdoch’s son took a lot of photographs of Blantyre during the 1950’s.
Behind those buildings, in what is now the Kirkton Avenue housing estate, was then Bellsfield Farm and the sheepwash, which would have been located in what is now Meadow Avenue. Auchinraith Road doesn’t appear to have changed too much, but Main Street is very
1936 Auchinraith map
different. Adjacent to the tenement home to Matts Pub, on the far right was another large tenement building called, “Mann’s Laun or Land”. It will take a person of a certain generation to remember that building.
Mann’s Laun tenement was built in the late 1880’s. It was a 2 storey large building separated into 6 compartments, each with a home upstairs and downstairs. Therefore 12 homes in total. It had a walled enclosed yard at the back, which was accessed by a central pend close (through access). Part of the little stone wall still exists today at the location at Main Street, directly opposite from South Lanarkshire Council’s, Kirkton Care Home.
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